Customers to be informed on fall in minimum balance in Savings Bank Account

india Savings Bank a/cThe Reserve Bank asked banks to inform their cus­tomers about fall in min­i­mum bal­ance well in advance and said that penal charges should be levied only to the extent of short­fall in such bal­ances. The guide­lines with respect to levy­ing of penal charges for non-main­te­nance of min­i­mum bal­ance will come into effect from 1 April, 2015.

RBI said the penal charges should be direct­ly pro­por­tion­ate to the extent of short­fall observed. Charges should be a fixed per­cent­age levied on the amount of dif­fer­ence between the actu­al bal­ance main­tained and the min­i­mum bal­ance as agreed upon at the time of open­ing of account. In the event of a default in main­te­nance of min­i­mum bal­ance, the bank should noti­fy the cus­tomer clear­ly by SMS/email/letter, giv­ing them time peri­od of one month to restore the bal­ance so as to avoid penal charges. In case the min­i­mum bal­ance is not restored with­in a rea­son­able peri­od, which shall not be less than one month from the date of notice of short­fall, penal charges may be recov­ered under inti­ma­tion to the account holder.

RBI fur­ther direct­ed banks to ensure that such penal charges are rea­son­able and not out of line with the aver­age cost of pro­vid­ing the ser­vices. Also, they should ensure that the bal­ance in the sav­ings account does not turn into neg­a­tive bal­ance sole­ly on account of levy of charges for non-main­te­nance of min­i­mum balance.

It also asked all banks to take imme­di­ate steps to update cus­tomer infor­ma­tion so as to facil­i­tate send­ing alerts through SMS or emails for effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of the guidelines.

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